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Connecting a WebObjects Application to the Web

WebObjects is an environment for building and deploying World Wide Web applications. For development, it provides a scripting language and objects that you use to create web applications. For deployment, it provides a system of interrelated components that connect your WebObjects applications to the Web. WebObjects development topics are discussed in more detail later in this chapter. This section discusses the parts of WebObjects related to deployment.

Connecting a WebObjects application to the Web involves the following:

WebObjects provides an adaptor for servers that use the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) and an adaptor for the Netscape Commerce Server that uses the Netscape Server API (NSAPI).
If the application doesn't contain any compiled code, you use one of the default applications. Instead of building your own executable, you implement all the application logic in script files. The default applications use these scripts to respond to requests.

Users can use any web browser to connect to a WebObjects application. As shown in Figure 1, when an HTTP server receives a request for a WebObjects application, it forwards the request to the WebObjects adaptor. The adaptor in turn forwards the request to the WebObjects application. Similarly, after an application generates a response---usually an HTML page---the application sends the response to the WebObjects adaptor, and the adaptor sends the response to the HTTP server.

Figure 1. Chain of Communication between Browser and WebObjects

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